Need to make a simple website

digisatman · 6 Dec 2012 at 18:20

Hey all,

Ive been tasked with making a simple website(new to making websites) with php/html(as per current one) for a charity i'm part of, anyone got tips for tutorial/websites to get one up and running as soon as possible. Its an entirely new design, so Id like to start from scratch.

Its nothing special, just a simple nice looking site.

Thanks,

Deleted member 77746 · 6 Dec 2012 at 18:22

Wordpress

reflux · 6 Dec 2012 at 18:24

Wordpress... very easy to get something professional looking with very little in the way of coding knowledge. For example, I put a complete recruitment system into a site with job posting, applications and CV storage, took me about half an hour with one plugin.

digisatman · 6 Dec 2012 at 19:42

Ive used wordpress before, but Id rather create something from the ground up, as it needs to be a bit more professional and less bloggy if you guys know what I mean?

Thanks for the idea though,

Swifty55 · 6 Dec 2012 at 19:58

Joomla.

Deleted member 77746 · 6 Dec 2012 at 22:04

with the right template and right customisation you can create a good site.

RoyMi6 · 6 Dec 2012 at 22:41

digisatman said:
Ive used wordpress before, but Id rather create something from the ground up, as it needs to be a bit more professional and less bloggy if you guys know what I mean?

Nope, no idea what you mean. Unles you're trying to do it specifically as a learning exercise you're shooting yourself from the word go due to your naivety and not investigating your options.

Quick Google (http://www.tripwiremagazine.com/2010/01/20-awesome-non-blogging-websites-using-wordpress-as-cms.html) shows how a WordPress website can look not as a blog.

If you don't want it to look like a blog, don't post news. Make the homepage just a static page and use WordPress to help you and others easily maintain it.

WordPress is no less an option than any other CMS but it's definitely more due to its ease of use, plugins, free online help and massive online community that will readily help you develop your own theme from the ground up.

spoffle · 6 Dec 2012 at 22:44

digisatman said:
Ive used wordpress before, but Id rather create something from the ground up, as it needs to be a bit more professional and less bloggy if you guys know what I mean?

Thanks for the idea though,

The whole "blog" aspect of wordpress is just its intended use, there are many many more uses of it though. You can completely strip out the blog aspect and set up a good looking website with wordpress. There are various free templates for this specifically.

JCX50 · 6 Dec 2012 at 22:56

'Wix' do a good website builder.

webhound · 7 Dec 2012 at 10:45

He wants a simple php/html website, why are you guys suggesting wordpress or cms? simply use html and php includes for your header, footers etc.

RoyMi6 · 7 Dec 2012 at 11:45

webhound said:
He wants a simple php/html website, why are you guys suggesting wordpress or cms? simply use html and php includes for your header, footers etc.

Flexibility of future updates to the site, ease of use for others in maintaining it.

Any worthwhile website is only as good as it's content. It's content is only going to be worthwhile if it gets updated. It's only get to get updated if it's easy to do. It's only going to be easy to do if it doesn't really on one person doing it.

Feel free to recommend any tutorials that the OP specifically asks for but as none of us have had to make use of these types of tutorials for quite some time it's actually quite hard to do.

Ultimately - http://lmgtfy.com/?q=creating+a+website+from+scratch

Edward01 · 7 Dec 2012 at 16:53

Swifty55 said:
Joomla.

Ohh god no!!!!

webhound said:
He wants a simple php/html website, why are you guys suggesting wordpress or cms? simply use html and php includes for your header, footers etc.

Why wouldn't you use Wordpress?? It's easy to setup, has great plugins, is quick, secure and will be very easy to manage / update in the future.

Don't be fooled into thinking Wordpress is only for blogs, that depends entirely on how the site is styled and setup.

Danny862 · 8 Dec 2012 at 16:27

WordPress isn't limited to blogs at all! in fact... static websites created in wordpress are often better than anything else!

Themes are highly customisable, make your own theme if you want.
Another reason WordPress is the best is the plugins, you can add a huge amount of features using plugins than any other way of making a website"

Try this first if your a bit critical, extract and run on a memory stick and its a portable wordpress.
http://www.instantwp.com/

lordhughes · 10 Dec 2012 at 15:59

Swifty55 said:
Joomla.

What has OP ever done to you!

antijoke · 10 Dec 2012 at 16:15

I have a question:

If one was making sites based on Wordpress for a portfolio and you tried to apply for a job in a web design company as a programmer/developer would these be deemed any less valuable than hand coded sites?

Edward01 · 10 Dec 2012 at 19:01

No, more so. If you can code for WordPress you can hand code so being able to do it for WordPress just adds an extra bow to your string.

Unless of course you're on about as a PHP developer in which case there's no way you'd apply for a developer role if you could only do Wordpress stuff.

reflux · 13 Dec 2012 at 15:49

I did it this year... I found a barebones template and styled it myself, then slapped it on top of WordPress. That way, you get a nice looking site you designed yourself with a very extensible back end and no recruiter or design agency can poo poo that.

blacblu · 20 Dec 2012 at 22:55

If you want to start from zero with no knowledge you should start by reading some books online. Recently I found a high quality material, from Lynda.com, "PHP with MySQL Essential Training DVD". HTML and CSS you can learn from w3schools.com.